


Bodies (break)

by ros3bud009



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Bad Rung, Because sometimes Gods are cruel and unempathetic, Body Horror, Gen, In at least three different interpretations of the term, Reality blurring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:06:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27050149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ros3bud009/pseuds/ros3bud009
Summary: “What? No. Well, some of them, but most are fine. Pleasant even. Why would you ask that?”Rung simply nodded and smiled as he slotted his digits together. It was a pleasant smile.“Good. So you realize that you’re the problem here.”
Comments: 12
Kudos: 59





	Bodies (break)

**Author's Note:**

> oops, look who thinks she can write spooky things again
> 
> Re: Body Horror, this fic hits:
> 
> -The horror of having a body  
> -The horror of wearing a dead body  
> -The traditional body horror of bad things happening to a body
> 
> Hope you enjoy????
> 
> Edit: oh also, title from the song Body by Mother Mother

“But that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

“What?” Ultra Magnus asked, optics flickering as if onlining after a deep recharge. Instead of finding himself in his berth though, he was sat in Rung’s office. Not like they did when he needed to talk business with Rung though, with Rung behind his desk and Ultra Magnus across from him in a visitor’s chair. Rather, they were off to the other side of the room, nothing separating the two of them but filtered air.

Ultra Magnus had never visited Rung as a therapist before.

Ultra Magnus _wouldn’t_ have come to Rung as a therapist.

Why had Ultra Magnus come to Rung as a therapist?

Rung looked wholly unbothered.

In fact, while his mouth was a perfectly professional line, neither a frown nor a smile, there was something about the light of his optics behind his spectacles that implied pleasantness.

“The discomfort you experience around others,” Rung continued. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

It was, wasn’t it?

“Yes,” escaped Ultra Magnus, slowly but surely. “I suppose it is. Professional settings are agreeable though, so it doesn’t affect my work.”

“But your personal life?”

Ultra Magnus’s shoulders shifted forward, unsuited to hunching but trying all the same.

“Personal interactions are… uncomfortable, yes.”

“Mm,” Rung hummed noncommittally as he leaned back in his chair. “Do you find your crewmates that distasteful?”

It wasn’t until he snapped his helm up in surprise that Ultra Magnus realized his helm had dipped at all.

“What? No. Well, some of them, but most are fine. Pleasant even. Why would you ask that?”

Rung simply nodded and smiled as he slotted his digits together. It was a pleasant smile.

“Good. So you realize that you’re the problem here.”

Ultra Magnus choked on the shame that filled him so quickly and thunderously it felt like drowning and burning all at once.

“I don’t understand.”

“Of course you do,” Rung chided with the silent accuracy of a sniper. He shifted in his seat to lean forward, crossing one leg over the other and resting his arms on it, staring Ultra Magnus down over his interlocked servos, still smiling pleasantly. “You’re a smart mech. An honest mech. You know it’s impossible to find comfort in the company of others when you’re so intent on hiding from them.”

Ultra Magnus wanted to leave. But the ever so slight tilt of Rung’s helm seemed to set the room spinning, humiliation and vertigo keeping him planted to the prison of his seat.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do.”

There was no avoiding the growing awareness of himself – of his small, meaningless frame wrapped up in another’s.

But still, he choked down the rising panic.

“I’m sure I don’t.”

The pleasant smile fell and a disappointed sigh replaced it. Rung’s digits untangled themselves so he could reach up and pluck the spectacles from his face.

There was something about the piercing blue of his bare optics that felt like staring into an approaching sun.

“Don’t lie to me, Minimus Ambus.”

Minimus’s spark pounded hard enough that he feared it could be heard through all his protective layers of metal.

“I—I don’t know who—”

“ **Don’t.** ”

If it hadn’t been for the creaking of metal, Minimus might have thought the sudden feeling of pressure was just his overwhelming panic. But no, his frame – Minimus’s armor, the barrier between himself and Ultra Magnus – registered the activation of pressure sensors, of the Ultra Magnus armor holding it tighter than it was meant to.

A static-laced noise of confusion was all Minimus could manage around the fear slowly gripping his vocalizer.

And Rung sat there, _staring_ into him, for a long, slow beat.

Finally, blessedly, he replaced his spectacles with another sigh.

“You know, Minimus,” Rung began, as if Ultra Magnus’s frame hadn’t started to dump stifling heat into the room, “there are mechs out there who will never know a frame made by their spark. Mechs who suffered, both at the hands of others and from their own discomfort, because they were shoved into a frame their spark had no say in.”

It didn’t make sense. Minimus scoured the Ultra Magnus armor’s coding, trying to find what had gone wrong. Certainly, there was some flexibility within it to account for the differences in those who had worn it, but the coding associated with those processes was untouched, showing the last use was still the day Minimus had adopted Ultra Magnus’s title and the armor was fitted to him.

And was – was Rung’s chair closer than before?

“Can you imagine what that might be like? To be denied their divine right to the frame meant for them?”

“Divine right?” Minimus asked, flexing his servos, reestablishing his control over Ultra Magnus.

Rung smiled again, and it was the same smile, but it felt wrong now. Unpleasant.

“Sparks are born of the divine, so it would follow that a forged mech’s frame, born of that very spark, is built upon divine blueprints. Do you disagree?”

It was fine. A fluke. An unexpected manifestation of panic, no doubt.

“Truthfully, I’m not interested in discussing any of this further,” Ultra Magnus managed, grasping the arms of the chair he sat in to push himself to his feet. He needed to escape. “If you want to discuss conspiracy theories questioning my identity, perhaps seek out Nightbeat. As for spirituality, I’m sure Drift would be more than happy to sate your boredom. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

“I won’t.”

Ultra Magnus hated the way he shivered.

“I’m leaving regardless.”

Rung sighed, disappointment clear.

“No, you’re not.”

Ultra Magnus’s legs didn’t move.

Minimus tried again. And again.

“I really don’t know why you insist on making this so hard, Minimus,” Rung admonished, as if speaking to an unruly subordinate.

It wasn’t that Minimus couldn’t still access the relevant coding. He could. He had all the access codes to the Ultra Magnus armor. But it just… it simply wouldn’t.

Minimus wondered if he wouldn’t just purge then and there with how terror swamped his spark.

“Wh—what did you do?!”

“What needs to be done.” Rung pulled his spectacles off again, but he didn’t look at Minimus at least. Instead he set to work wiping them down with a small cloth, utterly at ease, if irritated. “I’m doing this for _you_. Can’t you see that I’m trying to help?”

“I didn’t ask for your help!”

Rung tsked and looked up. But not up to Ultra Magnus’s optics. No—no, it was Minimus’s, hidden away beneath two layers of armor, offline and blind to the world.

But still he could feel that piercing gaze meeting his unseeing one.

“Minimus Ambus, your life is a cry for help.”

Rung stood from his chair, and as he did Ultra Magnus dropped to his knees, allowing Rung to look down his nose at Minimus.

“What do you want from me?” Minimus asked, aware that his voice trembled.

“Why do you hide behind Ultra Magnus?”

Minimus wished he could look away from Rung’s gaze, but how could he when by all rights he shouldn’t have been able to meet it? When his visual input was still coming from Ultra Magnus’s optics?

“I… I was recruited by Tyrest—”

“ **No.** ”

Minimus choked on a gasp as the Ultra Magnus armor pressed down again with an audible crunch and squeal of metal, taking up space that had been Minimus’s armor, crushing it down to take up room.

Rung, meanwhile, ex-vented with annoyance.

“I suggest you avoid mentioning him. Now, let’s try again, shall we? And please, be honest with me.”

“How?” Minimus wheezed as his processor was swarmed with errors and damage reports. His armor had been crushed to little more than a metal wall between his irreducible frame and the Ultra Magnus armor, and he was suddenly intimately aware that that’s exactly what it was: a barrier, and one that wouldn’t stand up to another push like that. “How are you—?!”

“ _Why_ do you insist on hiding, Minimus Ambus?” Rung interrupted, folding his servos behind his back, spectacles going with them. He tipped his helm. “You were gifted an extraordinary spark, and with it came an extraordinary frame. A strong frame. A frame to be proud of.”

“I’ll take the armor off,” Minimus offered, even as he realized that for all his access to the Ultra Magnus armor, he wasn’t sure he _could_ get out. It was different now. There was more of it. Parts that weren’t there before, parts that had been removed when lifeless frame was turned into wearable armor—

“Yet, without argument, you let your brother hide your divine frame away. It’s hard to say for certain if it was complimentary or mockery for your armor to look so much like how you were meant to be seen.” Rung stepped closer now, not touching, but close enough that Minimus could feel every soft ex-vent against the Ultra Magnus armor. And still he stared down at Minimus.

And then Rung sneered.

“And you jumped at the chance to live out your life inside a corpse you have no right to.”

With a force Minimus would have never guessed existed in Rung’s delicate frame, his forehelm slammed into the Ultra Magnus armor with such a ringing force that Minimus felt it rattle the broken armor around him.

“ **His frame was not made for you**.”

Minimus’s scream came from his own neglected vocalizer as the Ultra Magnus armor rejected him, shoving his consciousness fully and completely into his irreducible frame as it was impaled by his own armor shattering under the pressure of another push. It felt unbearably slow as the Ultra Magnus armor grew inward, forcing shards of Minimus’s armor through his forged plating, piercing him in dozens of places at such a pace that he could feel their paths as they sliced through metal and wiring and tubing.

It was little relief when it stopped and Minimus was left with the aching ruin of his trapped frame.

“I’m sorry,” Minimus whimpered as he tried to force his frame to move, to push out, to escape. He wasn’t even sure if he could be heard past the Ultra Magnus armor. “I’m sorry, please, I’m sorry, let me out, please!”

He swore he could hear that unpleasant smile in Rung’s voice.

“Then tell me why you insist on hiding the frame you were given, Minimus Ambus.”

“I’m sorry—”

“ **Tell me**.”

Sharp, all-consuming pain engulfed Minimus as Ultra Magnus pressed in just that smallest bit more.

“I don’t want it!!”

And then it stopped, but still Minimus wept as Rung kept watching him with those impossible optics.

“I don’t want this frame,” Minimus choked out as the energon filling his vents from the inside out finally made it up and into his mouth, spilling past his lips as tears streaked down his cheeks.

There was silence then, and Minimus hoped it was consideration.

And then his spark sank as he heard Rung sigh irritably.

“Who said you had a choice?”

And the pressure resumed.

* * *

It was three hours before Minimus could finally look at where he had scrambled out of the Ultra Magnus screaming when he’d onlined from recharge.

It took yet another two before he could finally coax himself back into it.

Even then, it took yet another hour of simply sitting inside the Ultra Magnus armor before finally he started to relax.

A nightmare.

A wildly visceral, emotionally devastating nightmare, but a nightmare nonetheless.

Ultimately, it was only the knowledge that he would be late to his shift if he waited any longer that got him up and moving. Because if he didn’t, others would take notice.

He bristled at the thought of anyone noticing something was amiss.

Fortunately, everything preceded as expected. Chaotic, certainly, but the sort of chaos that Ultra Magnus had become accustomed to. It was easy to slip into the comfort and ease of work.

“Ultra Magnus?”

Ultra Magnus went stiff, optics wide and bright at the sound of Rung’s voice behind him.

Rodimus, who he had been talking to, looked at him oddly, but tipped to one side to look around Ultra Magnus’s bulk, saying, “You rang, Ring?”

“Rung,” came the terrible confirmation. But still, Ultra Magnus managed to turn around and look down at the mech in question. And Rung looked, well.

Rung looked normal.

Rung wasn’t actually all that slight for a minibot, dwarfing the others on the Lost Light, but his limbs were long and gangly and delicate. And for all that he corrected Rodimus and looked a little put off at having to do so, his irritation seemed rather inconsequential, a small and passive emotion that was gone as quickly as it had come.

Hardly the terrifying God-like monster of Ultra Magnus’s nightmare.

“I hope I’m not interrupting anything?”

“Please, interrupt away,” Rodimus insisted, prompting an exasperated ex-vent from Ultra Magnus.

“You’ll need to go over and sign these forms eventually, Captain.”

“But not _now_ because you have something to keep you busy.”

“Rodimus—”

“Oh, it’s nothing so serious as that,” Rung interrupted, somehow still polite for it. “I was just a bit surprised to see you, Ultra Magnus.”

Ultra Magnus barely managed to hold back a shiver. It was silly, after all, to still be so nervous over a figment of his unruly imagination.

“Is that all?”

“Well, since you’re here, I’d hoped we might be able schedule in another appointment.”

Ultra Magnus’s – Minimus’s – sparkpulse quickened and his servos fisted reflexively.

Rodimus, however, was utterly nonplussed, glancing up at Ultra Magnus as he asked, “Whoa, you actually saw the shrink? He manage to get that stick out of your tailpipe?”

“Rodimus,” Rung chided, his gaze soft, gentle even. But when his optics drifted up to Ultra Magnus’s, the softness was replaced with an all too familiar pleasantness that made Minimus sick. “Progress was made, but I think there’s still room for growth.” And then Rung smiled unpleasantly. “I think you just need a little more pressure. Don’t you?”

And Minimus swore he heard something creak.


End file.
